Achieving Professional Excellence: A Local School Experience - Essay Sample

Introduction

A school is an institution where professional excellence is considered as terminal value. The major goal of any school is to ensure that professional excellence is attained at all levels. In a local school I worked in, professional excellence was considered a terminal value and all the members bore this in their mind. Thus, any act they did was targeted towards achieving professional excellence. This was measured through the end of the year performance. Thus, the behavior of the staff was greatly influenced by this realization and anything they did was targeted towards ensuring proper academic results at the end of the year.

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Instrumental values refer to aspects such as honesty among members of the staff (Alvesson, 2016). In the local school, honesty is a key value among the teachers as it ensures that students have trust with their teachers. If the teachers are dishonest, students cannot trust them. As such, all the teachers were encouraged to be as honest as possible in all dealings. This influenced the information teachers gave to the students and how they delivered it.

Main Beliefs and Norms of Organizational Members

There existed norms and beliefs in the local school I worked in. Some of these were related to work hours and meeting attendance. All staff members were expected to have reported to school by 8.00 in the morning. Besides, staff members were expected to attend all scheduled meetings in time and participate effectively. The norms and beliefs were meant to achieve organizational values such as professional excellence. For example, by arriving to school by 8.00 am, teachers would be able to teach effectively, thus leading to good academic performance. However, there are some aspects that can be improved, such as formulating a code of conduct detailing the repercussions of not adhering to the set norms and beliefs. For example, there needs to be a way to inquire from the teachers who come to school late the reason for them doing so and this could provide the administration with a better means of approaching the situation.

Socialization of New Members

New members in the school are taken through orientation by one of the existing staff members and are taught about the organizational culture. During this process, they are taught about the do's and don'ts of the organization as well as how they are supposed to respond to different situations. All this is meant to help them understand the organization's culture. While this process is beneficial, it only lasts for a few hours. The short time limits the new members from having a better understanding of the organization's culture. To ensure that new members learn everything about the culture, there is the need to extend their learning period to a few days or a week.

Organizational Ceremonies to Help Reinforce Values and Norms

In a bid to reinforce values and norms, the school organizes prize-giving days yearly where the best students and teachers are awarded. Besides, the school organizations team building events as a way of reinforcing the values and norms. Team building events are organized termly.

Source of the Values and Norms of the Organization's Culture

While the people and organization's rules and procedures contribute to the values and norms in the school, the organization's rules and procedures have a greater role to play than the people. The reason for this is that people may have varied opinions as to the norms that should be applied, but the rules and procedures are more concrete, and they apply equally to all the members, both new and old.

References

Alvesson, M. (2016). Organizational culture. Los Angeles: SAGE